Exam 9: Moons, Rings, and Plutoids: Small Worlds Among Giants

Using Jupiter's axial tilt, explain why its rings are harder to observe from Earth than even the dark rings of Uranus.

It takes the Pluto- Charon system _ to rotate around its common center of mass.

The rings of Uranus were discovered when it passed in front of a star, and the dark rings occulted the star several times for brief intervals.

The surface of Io looks most like the pack ice of the Arctic Ocean of Earth.

How are the large amounts of heating at Io generated?

The Cassini probe Huygens made a soft landing on Titan.

Because the probe came so close, Voyager 1 sent back high resolution photos of detail on the surface of Titan in 1980.

The weak magnetic field of Europa may originate from a rapidly rotating liquid iron core.

Discovered in the 1990s, the is a vaster, darker version of the more famed asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The moon _ may have erupted to create the E rings around Saturn.

Both Pluto and Charon are tidally locked to always keep the same faces toward each other, rotating and revolving around their common center of mass every 14.2 hours.

The Saturnian moons of most interest to exobiologists are

The F Ring around Saturn is maintained by .

Of all the Galilean satellites, the surface of Europa is the youngest in age.

In general, the less cratered a moon's surface, the _ it is.

What do all four ring systems have in common?

Which Jovian moon shows the most diverse terrain, suggesting a violent impact broke it into many pieces, some of which reformed it as a jumbled puzzle?

Io's internal heat is due to tidal interactions with Jupiter and Europa.

Contrast the densities and compositions of the four Galilean moons.

Alone among all the large moons, Triton orbits Neptune retrograde, and also at a 20 degree inclination to Neptune's equator.